Impacts of COVID-19 on the Energy System

This Briefing Paper explores the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the UK’s energy sector over the course of the first government-mandated national lockdown that began on 23 March 2020. Research from several aspects of the Integrated Development of Low-carbon Energy Systems (IDLES) programme at Imperial College London is presented in one overarching paper. The main aim is to determine what lessons can be learnt from that lockdown period, given the unique set of challenges it presented in our daily lives and the changes it brought about in energy demand, supply, and use. Valuable insights are gained into how working-from-home policies, electric vehicles, and low-carbon grids can be implemented, incentivised, and managed effectively

Can PV or solar thermal systems be cost effective ways of reducing CO 2 emissions for residential buildings?

This paper compares two solar systems, an actual building integrated, photovoltaic roof (BIPV) and a notional solar thermal system for a residential block in London, UK. The carbon payback for the solar thermal system is 2 years, the BIPV system has a carbon payback of 6 years. Simple economic payback times for both systems are more than 50 years. Calculations considering the current UK energy price increase (10%/yr), reduce the economic payback time for the PV roof to under 30 years.The costs to reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions using a BIPV roof are £196/tonne CO2, solar thermal individual systems at £65/tonne CO2 and community solar thermal at £38/tonne CO2. The current spot market price for CO2 is £15/tonne CO2 (20). Capital costs for PV systems in particular must be significantly reduced for them to be a cost-effective way to reduce CO2. This paper compares two solar systems, an actual building integrated, photovoltaic roof (BIPV) and a notional solar thermal system for a residential block in London, UK. The carbon payback for the solar thermal system is 2 years, the BIPV system has a carbon payback of 6 years. Simple economic payback times for both systems are more than 50 years. Calculations considering the current UK energy price increase (10%/yr), reduce the economic payback time for the PV roof to under 30 years.The costs to reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions using a BIPV roof are £196/tonne CO2, solar thermal individual systems at £65/tonne CO2 and community solar thermal at £38/tonne CO2. The current spot market price for CO2 is £15/tonne CO2 (20). Capital costs for PV systems in particular must be significantly reduced for them to be a cost-effective way to reduce CO2

Cost-efficient integration of variable renewable electricity - Variation management and strategic localisation of new demand

The aim of this work was to improve our understanding of how wind power and solar photovoltaics (PV) can be integrated into the European electricity system in a cost-efficient manner. For this, a techno-economic, cost-minimising model of the electricity system is refined for a number of case studies. The case studies cover different geographical scopes, ranging from isolated regions that have different conditions for wind and solar power to larger areas of Europe, and employ various strategies for variation management. Variation management can be provided by strategies that are internal to the electricity system, such as flexible bio-based generation, battery storage, and trade, as well as measures that become available from the electrification of the industry, transportation, and heating sectors.The results show that there is a need for different variation management strategies (VMS) in different system contexts. In regions with exceptionally good conditions for variable renewable electricity (VRE), wind and solar power integration benefits from absorbing strategies, which create value for electricity at low-net-load and negative-net-load events. In regions where the conditions for VRE are not adequate to out-compete baseload generation, complementing technologies that reduce the net-load during high-net-load events are needed to enable cost-efficient wind and solar power integration. Shifting strategies, which manage variations of short duration and high frequency, are primarily suited to the diurnal variations of solar PV. Solar PV can also be efficient at supplying electricity for hydrogen production for steel or other industries, especially if the demand is flexible over the year, such that the seasonality of solar power does not result in a demand for costly complementing technologies during wintertime. Variation management can increase the cost-efficient share of VRE that can be integrated into the system, while reducing the total cost of meeting the demand for electricity. One of the strongest VMS covered in this work involves optimising the charging of electric vehicles together with vehicle-to-grid exchange (discharging from electric cars to the grid), which can reduce the cost of electricity generation by up to 33% in a solar-dominated system. The same strategy reduces the cost by only 8% in a wind power- and hydropower-rich region with inherent flexibility, which highlights the importance of context when addressing the future electricity system. Trading electricity through transmission can be useful for integrating wind and solar power, in that transmission can smoothen wind variations between regions and it can transfer electricity from electricity systems with superior wind or solar power resources. A scarcity of bioenergy would entail a high value being placed on available biomass that is to be used for the purpose of complementing wind and solar power. To maximise the provision of flexibility through biomass, it could be utilised with negative-emissions technologies to enable the usage of fossil-derived natural gas. Bio-based generation that is deployed to meet net-negative emissions targets would, however, not provide flexibility. Nonetheless, biomass gasification with carbon capture and storage and utilisation could deliver both a flexible fuel and negative emissions. This could also provide absorbing VMS, if the utilisation part is designed to run flexibly by enabling enhanced biogas production during low-net-load periods. The combination of transformation and expansion of the electricity system may result in large regional differences in available VRE resources. In addition to transmission, strategic localisation of new electricity demands to regions with good resources becomes beneficial from the perspectives of economics and VRE integration. The results of this work underline the importance of combining different technologies and strategies and demonstrates the value of using them where they are best suited rather than deploying one strategy to tackle every situation

The Critical Role of Public Charging Infrastructure

Editors: Peter Fox-Penner, PhD, Z. Justin Ren, PhD, David O. JermainA decade after the launch of the contemporary global electric vehicle (EV) market, most cities face a major challenge preparing for rising EV demand. Some cities, and the leaders who shape them, are meeting and even leading demand for EV infrastructure. This book aggregates deep, groundbreaking research in the areas of urban EV deployment for city managers, private developers, urban planners, and utilities who want to understand and lead change

Development of Mathematical Models to Explore the Potential of Wind Fleets to Decarbonize Electricity Grid Systems

Real-time records of energy generation in the UK and Germany have been used to develop models for each country’s electricity generation system, the objective being to provide a means of determining the likely economic limits of wind fleets and their consequent ability to decarbonise their grids. The results from the models, expressed in the form of marginal efficiencies, have then been codified in a pair of simple look-up tables, obviating the need for further reference to the models and providing a simple means of assessing the implications for the grids and their wind fleets of a range of future grid configurations, including increases in wind and solar fleet capacities, anticipated future loss in both countries of nuclear-generating capacity, possible replacement of petrol and diesel passenger vehicles with electric vehicles, and, for the UK only, the conversion of domestic boilers from gas to electricity. It is apparent that headroom, being the difference between annual average grid demand and base generation, is the single most important factor in determining how much wind capacity may be economically deployed in decarbonising grids

Electrification of Urban Waste Collection: Introducing a Simulation-Based Methodology for Feasibility, Impact and Cost Analysis

We introduce a multi-agent-based simulation methodology to investigate the feasibility and evaluate environmental and economic sustainability of an electrified urban waste collection. Electrification is a potential solution for transport decarbonization and already widely available for individual and public transport. However, the availability of electrified commercial vehicles like waste collection vehicles is still limited, despite their significant contribution to urban emissions. Moreover, there is a lack of clarity whether electric waste collection vehicles can persist in real word conditions and which system design is required. Therefore, we present a synthetic model for waste collection demand on a per-link basis, using open available data. The tour planning is solved by an open-source algorithm as a capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). This generates plausible tours which handle the demand. The generated tours are simulated with an open-source transport simulation (MATSim) for both the diesel and the electric waste collection vehicles. To compare the life cycle costs, we analyze the data using total cost of ownership (TCO). Environmental impacts are evaluated based on a Well-to-Wheel approach. We present a comparison of the two propulsion types for the exemplary use case of Berlin. And we are able to generate a suitable planning to handle Berlin’s waste collection demand using battery electric vehicles only. The TCO calculation reveals that the electrification raises the total operator cost by 16-30 %, depending on the scenario and the battery size with conservative assumptions. Furthermore, the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) can be reduced by 60-99%, depending on the carbon footprint of electric power generation.DFG, 398051144, Analyse von Strategien zur vollständigen Dekarbonisierung des urbanen Verkehr

Lithium industry and the U.S. crude oil prices. A fractional cointegration VAR and a Continuous Wavelet Transform analysis.

This paper analyzes the dynamics of U.S. lithium mining companies, the lithium industry and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices using a Fractional Cointegration Vector AutoRegressive model (FCVAR model) and a Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) for its resolution. The results indicate evidence of a negative relationship between FMC Corp with Albermale and SQM stock prices. These results are similar if we analyze the risk based on the beta term structure of each company. Analyzing the fractional differencing parameter for the stock prices and their logs, we observe that they are very persistent, and there are no long-term deviations in the stock prices. The same happens when analyzing the beta term structure. Based on Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) methods, our results show that lithium mining companies and the lithium industry are weakly correlated with WTI crude oil prices at higher frequencies (short-run) and persist through the sample period. At lower frequencies (long-term) the time series reached a high level of dependence between late 2012 to mid 2016, concluding that the lithium mining companies and the lithium industry reflect and foreshadow the responsiveness of the WTI crude oil prices during the period mentioned above.pre-print399 K

Optimising Energy Flexibility of Boats in PV-BESS Based Marina Energy Systems

Implementation of alternative energy supply solutions requires the broad involvement of local communities. Hence, smart energy solutions are primarily investigated on a local scale, resulting in integrated community energy systems (ICESs). Within this framework, the distributed generation can be optimally utilised, matching it with the local load via storage and demand response techniques. In this study, the boat demand flexibility in the Ballen marina on Samsø—a medium-sized Danish island—is analysed for improving the local grid operation. For this purpose, suitable electricity tariffs for the marina and sailors are developed based on the conducted demand analysis. The optimal scheduling of boats and battery energy storage system (BESS) is proposed, utilising mixed-integer linear programming. The marina’s grid-flexible operation is studied for three representative weeks—peak tourist season, late summer, and late autumn period—with the combinations of high/low load and photovoltaic (PV) generation. Several benefits of boat demand response have been identified, including cost savings for both the marina and sailors, along with a substantial increase in load factor. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm increases battery utilisation during summer, improving the marina’s cost efficiency. The cooperation of boat flexibility and BESS leads to improved grid operation of the marina, with profits for both involved parties. In the future, the marina’s demand flexibility could become an essential element of the local energy system, considering the possible increase in renewable generation capacity—in the form of PV units, wind turbines or wave energy